My only complaint is that the illustrations, which are gorgeous, don't list the people's name, dates, locations, and blurbs about their contributions.
It's hard to adequately describe collective biographies, but this is a great addition to school and public libraries, and one of a growing number of books covering previously unheralded innovators with significant impact on the world like Baptiste and Wilson's new African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History and Mir and Jaleel's Muslim Girls Rise (2019, Salaam Reads). It amazes me that he is not covered in US history classes. The most fascinating person to me was Abdul Rahman Ibrahim, born in Guinea in 1762 to a powerful West African ruler and enslaved and brought to the US. There are some people who will be more well known to Western readers who were converts to Islam, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), but I found entries about people like poet Nana Asma'u, born in Nigeria in 1793, to be more interesting. People from a variety of backgrounds, careers, and areas of the world are covered. These range from Al-Ma'mun, who was born in 786, to Malala.
Since she wanted to include people whose influence stretched beyond their own country, some people who might be controversial are included.Įach entry starts with a few sentences about the person's general contribution, then includes any information about the person's family and childhood, career arc, problems faced, and lasting legacy. This has been largely ignored in Western civilization, and it can be difficult to find any personal information on some of this groundbreaking people. Farqui starts the book with information about how hard it is to find biographies about Muslims, even though this community has a long history of innovation and interest in the science and arts. Arranged in order of year of birth and accompanied by beautiful illustrations, this collective biography is painstakingly researched and gives brief overviews of a wide range of Muslim pioneers from all over the globe.
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